In the two decades following World War II, it seemed there was no limit to technological growth. Sure, a computer was still the size of an entire room, and no one had telephones in their pockets. But techno-utopian ideas like flying cars and jetpacks and meal pills were all being taken very seriously as the inevitable… »7/16/13 11:11am 7/16/13 11:11am

More and more, we can get computers to do things for us by talking to them. A computer can call your mother when you tell it to, find you a pizza place when you ask for one, or write out an email that you dictate. Sometimes the computer gets it wrong, but a lot of the time it gets it right, which is amazing when you… »11/30/12 10:03am 11/30/12 10:03am

Mountain Lion, the next big software cat for your Mac, has a gazillion new features. Too many to name, and frankly, to care about. But there's one you should pay attention to, because it might change all of computing. »7/12/12 10:10am 7/12/12 10:10am

Though the new iPad doesn't have Siri, it does have Dictation, which lets you dictate what you want to say to the email, notes, messages, and other apps. And like Siri, Dictation needs an internet connection in order to work, that's because Apple needs to send your phrases to its servers to make sense out of your… »3/20/12 3:40pm 3/20/12 3:40pm

Dragon Dictate 2.0 has roared onto OSX, harnessing a new and improved Dragon 11 engine and sporting a revamped UI. What that means for you is that it'll be easier (and more accurate) than ever to not only dictate text into your computer, but also edit documents, switch between programs, search Google, and plenty more.… »9/20/10 11:46am 9/20/10 11:46am

Years of battling cancer have left film ubercritic Roger Ebert without a portion of his jaw, and consequentially, his voice. Esquire's superb profile outlined his efforts to regain a voice—his voice—but left us wondering: How will that work? »2/18/10 2:56pm 2/18/10 2:56pm

There've been some dictation apps before now, but now Nuance, makers of Dragon, the world's most popular desktop dictation software, is invading the App Store with their own. Plus, it's free (for a limited time)! Update:»12/08/09 12:00am 12/08/09 12:00am

Olympus announced its Voice Trek G-10, a voice recorder whose corner slips off to reveal a USB jack which you plug directly into your PC to transfer your recordings. Its built-in 256MB of memory seems rather paltry until you realize that you can shoehorn 69 hours of low-quality audio recording into its mini form… »6/19/06 9:33am 6/19/06 9:33am

Sanyo has introduced the latest additions to its Diply line of voice recorders, and both have a rather odd look with their stalk-like external microphones attached up top. The behemoth of the bunch is the ICR-S340RM (left), which holds a gigabyte worth of sounds—that's good for 140 hours of voice recording. If that's… »2/15/06 5:45pm 2/15/06 5:45pm